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Letter from the Editor

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There have now been 100 people murdered in Memphis this year. It's appalling, horrifying. But what would you do if bombs went off every day somewhere in Shelby County, killing an average of 100 people -- friends, neighbors, and family?

What if Presbyterians and Baptists were involved in a bloody war with each other on our streets? What if the Southaven Police Department abducted two Memphis police officers and Memphis unleashed a retaliatory attack that leveled Southaven and killed hundreds of civilians? What if missiles rained down on us from Mississippi? What if that hell-on-earth called the Middle East was here? We'd feel powerless, frightened, trapped.

But it's not here. It's thousands of miles away. What can we do about it? Sigh and shake our heads? March in the streets? I don't know, frankly. But with so many people citing their religion as a basis for killing other people, something's mightily off kilter on our little planet. Too many powerless people, including women and children, are suffering at the hands of the powerful -- dying through no fault of their own.

We read the following passage aloud together at church on Sunday. I offer it for what it's worth.